The Other Woman
by Ariadne'sThread
Summary: A series of short but not necessarily sweet AU drabbles, based on the question: 'what if the other woman had ended up in the oven'
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sweeny Todd (or any associated plots or characters). I just borrowing them. **

**What if the other woman ended up in the oven?**

If anything, Mrs Lovett was surprised by how easy it was to drag Lucy into the oven and let her burn. The beggar woman's body was frail and wasted from illness and malnutrition while Mrs Lovett was strong from years of hard work and months of dismembering corpses. It wasn't until the heavy iron door was closed and the cellar filled with the smell of burning flesh that she thought about what she had done.

It's not like she had killed her, she reasoned, trying not to imagine the beggar woman's flesh melting and the golden hair turning black. She'd just got rid of the body. She'd_ had_ to get rid of the body. If Mr T had recognised her… She couldn't let that happen. Or, she knew for a fact, there would have been two dead women in that cellar.

_Besides,_ a small voice added, _it'd tear him apart if he knew what he'd done. Better for both of us if he never finds out. It's for his own good really._

There was blood on her hands, and she wiped it absently on her skirt.

Upstairs a woman screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

**What if the other woman screamed?**

There is no timely scream to save Johanna.

The barber in front of her is dyed red with the judge's blood, but it is his eyes that make him seem truly demonic. He advances on her, his razor flashing silver and scarlet. Desperately she thinks of Anthony. Why did he bring her here?

Johanna's heart is hammering against her chest like a caged bird trying to escape. There is nowhere for her to escape to. She stumbles backwards, stammering out something –a protest or a plea- that she barely registers even as she's saying it.

The barber does not listen.

oOo

Sweeney Todd's world is reduced to blood: the Judge's, obscenely warm on his skin; his own, pounding through his veins; and the boy's, waiting to be spilt. He grabs the boy by the scruff of the neck and smiles as he does so.

But the boy is not a boy. Yellow hair falls past her shoulders like an epiphany. Fifteen years fall away.

_Lucy,_ the barber breathes. He falls to his knees. The razor drops from his hand, unheeded. Forgotten.

Lucy.

The angel and the demon. Together at last.

When he looks up, the room is empty and he is alone.

200 words


	3. Chapter 3

**What if the razor found the other throat?**

_She said she'd never let anything harm him._

If there's one thing Mrs Lovett has learned it's that almost anything can be endured by taking things one step at a time. So she follows Mr Todd through the labyrinth of sewers, half of her hoping that they'll find Toby, the other half praying that they won't.

She focuses on the facts instead. Her and Mr T walking together. Sometimes, when it's slippery or the bricks are crumbling, he takes her arm. His hand doesn't feel like a killer's hand, even as the other is gripping one of his friends. She allows herself to believe that they are married, that Toby is their son and they are calling him in for supper.

Her voice is high with nerves as she calls for Toby. Higher, next to Mr T's gruff one. He doesn't sound like a murderer. Then again, she doesn't sound like a woman who bakes people into pies for a living. Cats perhaps. Not people.

They find Toby exhausted, terrified and alone; all the fight in him long gone. It's over in one quick flash of silver.

_ She said that she'd never let anything harm him: now nothing ever can._

(200 words)


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own and am not profiting from Sweeney Todd or any associated characters or situations. This incarnation belongs to Stephen Sondheim and Tim Burton. Credit and thanks for beta-ing go to Obscure Bird: whose fic Kidney Pie I highly recommend. **

**---**

**What then?**

Sweeney Todd mellows after the Judge's death: he drifts from room to room, staring into the distance, as though looking for people he knows aren't there.

In this state he's easy to control: Mrs Lovett has him disable the trapdoor, clears out the cellar, starts ordering meat from the butchers. The similarity between the taste of pork and the _other_ meat is unsettling.

The customers lessen, but they don't dry up entirely. Mrs Lovett doesn't lament them: she keeps an eye on the street during the day, waiting for the day that someone will trace the Judge and Beadle to them. During the night she lies still and listens for noises from the cellar. Toby is still down in the sewers, his dead eyes reproachful.

Mr T doesn't sleep upstairs in the barber's shop anymore. Mrs Lovett wonders if it's her he sees or his long lost, newly dead wife. She realises now that she was foolish to think he could ever be hers: once the vengeance has gone there's very little left.

The razors don't call to him anymore, but she can hear them, calling for her blood. Somewhere, in the darkness, Toby is beckoning for her to follow.

**-finis-**


End file.
